The singing's terrible and the guitar-playing ain't great, but we should still applaud Lil Wayne's rock effort. So Weezy is wading into the rock waters. Pretty wild, huh? The best selling rapper of 2008 is switching genres. At least for the moment. A day or so ago, i asked people on Twitter and Facebook what […]

Congrats are in order to Afro-punk's James Spooner, Matthew Morgan, Kaos Blac, Rape Whistle and all the bands that were shouted out in the MTV.com article that broke yesterday. Some tidbits: The fundamental contradiction of black kids feeling left out of rock — which from its very beginning was based on black music — has […]

Beyonce Knowles, who plays Etta James in the upcoming movie "Cadillac Records", was profiled in Sunday’s New York Times. Here are some thought-provoking excerpts: As she learned the history of Chess Records — which added amplification and urban sophistication to the Delta blues on recordings by giants like Waters and Howlin’ Wolf, and helped to […]

Spin Magazine provides an interesting look back on artists who helped spearhead the Black rock movement in the mid- to late-80s, Vernon Reid and Corey Glover (Living Colour), Rick Skatore (24-7 Spyz), Angelo Moore (Fishbone) and Chuck Mosely (Faith No More). For the full article, you’re going to have to buy the magazine.

Dragons of Zynth opens tomorrow’s 8th Annual Village Voice Siren Festival. They also get some well-deserved ink in the Voice. Check out some of what Rob Harvilla had to say about them: . . .their blunt, almost free-jazz assaults on conventional songwriting convulse with moments of ethereal beauty and bursts of pulverizing thrash, which they […]

’08 is shaping up to be a good year. The Black Rock Coalition (BRC) recently launched a new site with the goal of providing a black countercultural POV on just about everything. Organization co-founder Greg Tate is leading the charge from and editorial standpoint. As you would then expect, music journalism is the core and […]